KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT NOVEL APPLICATIONS

Vasso Stylianou, Andreas Savva

Department of Computer Science, School of Sciences and Engineering, Intercollege

P.O. Box 24005, 1700 Nicosia, Cyprus

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Applications, Web Content Management Systems.

Abstract: Knowledge Management (KM) is a process through which an enterprise gathers, organizes, shares, and

analyzes the knowledge of individuals and groups across the organization in ways that directly affect

performance. Numerous businesses have implemented KM systems in an effort to achieve commercial

effectiveness. This paper has collected information about a number of KM systems developed and used by

modern businesses. It then presents the development steps leading to the implementation of a Web Content

Management System to be used as a Research Management System. This will manage the acquisition,

analysis, perseverance and utilization of knowledge regarding various research projects - including proposed

projects, ongoing projects and finalized projects - and research-related emails.

1 INTRODUCTION

Knowledge Management, as it is practiced today, is

a system of technologies focused upon the delivery

of strategically useful knowledge and expertise, the

availability of which facilitates effective

collaboration and timely decision-making. (Villegas,

2001) Such technologies include: Intranets,

Extranets, Data Warehouse, Document

Management, Groupware, Decision Support

Systems, Web-conferencing, Project Management,

Work flow, and more.

Using KM systems organizations may integrate

their knowledge into their business processes,

products and services. In general, KMS assist

organizations to:

• Capture important knowledge that would

otherwise be lost when employees leave the

organization

• Increase productivity and efficiency

• Improve customer service and support

• Improve collaboration with partners and

suppliers

• Perform improved decision-making

• Reduce costs by eliminating redundant

processes

• Train and develop employees’ skills.

2 KM MARKET PLAYERS

Top vendors of Knowledge Management software

include Autonomy, IBM Lotus, Plumtree, Microsoft,

Hummingbird, and Open Text. Others include

Sybase, Brio, Cognos, Tibco, SageMaker,

SeeCommerce, Viador and Hyperion. Their

products range from specialized KM solutions to

KM portals.

The market players though in the area of KM are

not only the above major vendors but also a great

number of businesses that have implemented

specialized KM solutions in several of their

functional units. A small sample of technology

leading companies and some reference to the KM

systems developed is possible to see in Table 1.

3 A KMS MATERIALIZES

The system described in this case is a Web Content

Management System (WCMS) to be used to manage

research activity.

To meet its aims and objectives, Intercollege’s

Research Office needs to acquire, analyze, preserve

and utilize knowledge regarding various projects -

including proposed projects, ongoing projects and

finalized projects - and research-related emails.

335

Stylianou V. and Savva A. (2006).

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT NOVEL APPLICATIONS.

In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - AIDSS, pages 335-338

DOI: 10.5220/0002458803350338

 SciTePress

Table 1: Examples of Knowledge management Systems.

Company Name, Product Name Brief KMS description/purpose

Centrelink, Off-Site File Storage project Maintain and provide the corporate memory to support our people and

ensure the right information is available to them at the right time, so

that they can develop and share their knowledge with the organisation.

Centrelink, Performance Data Management

System project

Apply our knowledge (corporate and specific) to analyse the

information in terms of requirements and operation.

Abuzz, Beehive A system that receives email containing requests for information and

routes it to experts, based on profiles.

Ernst & Young, Future State ’97 (FS’97)

strategy (Davenport, 1997)

Included, but not limited to, capturing and leveraging knowledge from

consulting engagements and the rapid application of this knowledge,

models, and approaches to client situations.

Hewlett-Packard, Connex, a Network of

Experts.. (Davenport, 1996)

A guide to human knowledge resources within the labs. Also available

in HP are a KMS on product processes and a Computer Dealer Channel

Hewlett-Packard, Trainers’ Trading Post

(Davenport, 1996)

Knowledge sharing for HP educators. Includes a discussion database

on training topics and a collection of training documents.

Higher Level Systems, Assistum A suite of software products that uses rules and fuzzy logic to aid

decision making

IntraBlocks, e:Folders A collaboration tool which works with Microsoft and Netscape servers

to allow users to create folders for sharing knowledge objects.

Microsoft , SPUD (Skills Planning und

Development) (Davenport, 1997b)

Keeps a structure of competency types and levels required for particular

jobs, rates employees’ performance and links competencies to learning

offerings.

Molloy Group, The KnowledgeBridge A product using AI techniques to help customer support personnel

solve problems.

Primus Communications Corp. A system that allows a group of high tech companies to share an

advanced technical customer support.

IBM, Internet Knowledge Manager A system that allows nonprogrammers to write and run their own

internet agents using Netscape.

AiA Inc., IdeaProcessor A tool to graphically capture and show the relationships between

concepts discussed during meeting, interviews, and in documents.

Wincite Systems A KMS that allows the mapping of knowledge to markets, products,

processes and manager responsibilities and supports the distribution of

timely intelligence.

HP, Connex – A Network of Experts The goal of this program is to provide a guide to human knowledge

resources within the Labs and, eventually, to other parts of Hewlett-

Packard.

HP, Knowledge Management on Product

Services

A corporate group and software with the mission of advancing product

development and introduction

ICEIS 2006 - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

336

Such tasks can be handled using the proposed

Research Management System, a web-enabled

Content Management System. As a web-enabled

system and since it will be installed on Intercollege’s

intranet, this CMS will provide the ability to its end-

users to access it securely from anywhere within

Intercollege eliminating the need for any software to

be installed on their desktop computers.

Furthermore, such a system will be more easily

maintained and upgraded. Through it the Research

Office will be able to rapidly publish a variety of

content to interested parties.

The methodology selected for developing the

Research Management System was that of Rapid

Application Development (RAD) with the following

phase breakdown (van Vliet, 2002): Requirements

planning, User Design, Construction and Cutover.

During the construction phase, a prototype

system was created by the developer to be reviewed

by the end-users. Modification and upgrades were

then made on the prototype until this was considered

to be complete. At the cutover phase –the last phase

of the RAD model- the constructed system has

undergone thorough testing by the developers and

the users. Training was provided to end-users and

the system implementation was considered to have

been completed.

3.1 RAD Phases of Project

Development

Requirements Planning: The main two problems

identified with the existing system were: 1) the

tracking of faculty’s proposed, ongoing and finalized

projects and current or future research activity. , 2)

the publication and distribution of research-related

emails, (received in hundreds every week from local

and international agencies), to interested parties at

Intercollege.

User Design

: In a JAD session arranged with the

Research Office to review in detail the requirements

set at the JRP it was decided that:

o The system should be designed as a Web-based

system accessible through a browser from any

machine on the Intercollege network. Plans for

Internet accessibility were considered but

dropped for security reasons.

o The system should provide the ability to users

with administrative privileges to fully manage it

o Additionally, the system should provide tools

that would aid the end-users being the faculty to

submit their projects and research activities and

then manage (add / edit / delete) all their details.

o Users should also have the ability to track down

projects, research interests and emails using a

search tool resembling those found on Internet

search engines.

o The system should retrieve new emails from the

mail servers at scheduled time intervals, store

them in its database on a readable format, notify

the administrator about their arrival and provide

a function for their acceptance/rejection and

further distribution (publication) to interested

user groups. If the administrator selected to

distribute the emails to any interested group

then the members of this group should be

notified of the existence of new emails that may

concern them.

o The system should be fast, stable and above all

extremely secure due to the importance of the

information being manipulated.

Construction

: The construction phase of the project

began by taking under serious consideration the

hardware and the software infrastructure of

Intercollege.

Hardware Infrastructure:

An in-depth analysis of

hardware infrastructure was made to establish that

this could support the proposed system.

Due to the fact that the system to be built would

acquire, manage and store information; a need for a

database server was imperative. The only server

option available at Intercollege was Microsoft’s

Internet Information Services (IIS 6.0), which run

under Windows 2000 Advanced Server of Windows

2003 Server platforms.

Finally, because the system was to interact with a

mail server for the retrieval, categorization and

publication of research-related emails the

Microsoft’s Exchange Server used at Intercollege to

handle all incoming/outgoing mails would be used.

This provides secure access to ones mail inbox from

the Intercollege’s network (LAN) or from remote

networks (WAN).

Software Infrastructure:

Following a systematic

comparison of all the widely used languages it was

decided to use Microsoft’s ASP.NET Internet

programming language since this would allow us to

develop in a more clear, precise and rapid manner

the system, minimizing the occurrence of errors.

Entities of the System:

The Research Office required

that the design of the online Web Forms should

match the design of the paper forms used to hand out

to researchers. The collection and examination of all

of the data that appears in these forms let to the

construction of the knowledge base Entity

Relationship Model.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT NOVEL APPLICATIONS

337

Coding the System: As mentioned earlier,

Microsoft’s ASP.NET programming language was

selected in order to develop the system. ASP.NET is

a server-side language in which the code is not

included within the HTML.

Throughout our project the syntax used for

ASP.NET language was VBScript (Visual BASIC

Script). Additionally for our project knowledge of

SQL (Structured Query Language) was imperative

due to the extensive use of data stored in a database.

The Cutover phase

: During the Cutover phase the

final constructed system went through thorough

testing by the development team. Real data such as

project proposals and research-related material was

obtained and used as testing aids to measure the

correctness and usability of the system.

Additionally, at the pre-implementation phase the

system was tested against various emails with

different content such as images, executable file, etc.

to ensure that mails arriving from research-related

agencies would be available to its end-users.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented examples of business

knowledge management systems and demonstrated

through a case study the development of one such

system that falls in the subcategory of Web Content

Management Systems. The system under

construction being a Research Management System

is required to acquire, analyze, preserve and utilize

knowledge regarding various projects - including

proposed projects, ongoing projects and finalized

projects - and research-related emails. The

methodology followed and the detailed description

of all the decisions that needed to be made as well as

the overall work that was completed, might prove

useful to others with similar requirements that would

call for the development of a Web Content

Management System.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Nicholas Loulloudes for the

implementation of the WCM.

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